Stephanie Corinna Bille, a Swiss short-story writer, playwright, poet, and novelist and winner of the 1975 French Prix Concourt, is often considered the major contemporary Franco-Swiss woman writer. In The Transparent Girl and Other Stories Monika Giacoppe and Christiane Makward have assembled and translated a magnificent collection of Bille's work that exposes an English-speaking audience--many for the first time--to Bille's exotic, captivating, mystical, and sexually provocative stories.
Includes stories featured in Pantheon—now an animated series on AMC+ “I know this is going to sound hyperbolic, but when I’m reading Ken Liu’s stories, I feel like I’m reading a once-in-a-generation talent. I’m in awe.” —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author “Captivating.” —BuzzFeed “Extraordinary.” —The Washington Post “Brilliant.” —The Chicago Tribune With the release of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu’s short fiction has resonated with a generation of readers. From stories about time-traveling assassins, to Black Mirror-esque tales of cryptocurrency and internet trolling, to heartbreaking narratives of parent-child relationships, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a far-reaching work that explores topical themes from the present and a visionary look at humanity’s future. This collection includes a selection of Liu’s speculative fiction stories over the past five years—seventeen of his best—plus a new novelette. In addition, it also features an excerpt from The Veiled Throne, the third book in Liu’s epic fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty. Stories include: Ghost Days; Maxwell's Demon; The Reborn; Thoughts and Prayers; Byzantine Empathy; The Gods Will Not Be Chained; Staying Behind; Real Artists; The Gods Will Not Be Slain; Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer; The Gods Have Not Died in Vain; Memories of My Mother; Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts; Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard; A Chase Beyond the Storms (an excerpt from The Veiled Throne, Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty); The Hidden Girl; Seven Birthdays; The Message; Cutting
Transparent’s Fiona McClean could be a superhero. She has a mutation that allows her to become invisible. But her father, a Las Vegas crime lord, forces her to use her power for evil. Since she was five, she’s been stealing cars, robbing banks, and spying on people. Fiona’s had enough, so she escapes to a small town far from her father’s reach. Happiness is hard to find surrounded by a mother she hates, a brother she can’t trust, and a guy at school she can’t stand, but Fiona manages to make some friends. And when her father finally tracks her down, Fiona discovers how far she’ll go to protect everyone she’s come to love. Fans of strong heroines like Daughter of Smoke and Bone’s Karou or Maximum Ride’s Max will fall in love with Transparent by Natalie Whipple.
Ormond Gigli had an illustrious career as a photojournalist over the course of some 40 years and took many magnificent photographs-but one photograph has eclipsed all the others. It was a photograph he conceived for himself, without an editorial assignment. It is the incomparable "Girls in the Windows" of 1960. Girls in the Windows: And Other Stories is the first book to survey the work of Ormond Gigli and escorts the viewer behind the façade of that incredible photograph-to understand its genesis and to celebrate its remarkable achievement-in addition to creating a portal into the rest of Gigli's brilliant career. This beautifully illustrated volume showcases Gigli's celebrity and fashion photographs, and includes his innovative work in the worlds of theater, film, and dance, as well as his little-known travel photography and photojournalism. Gigli, a master of photo art direction, orchestrated his photo shoots like an accomplished film director, and his portraits are intimate and revealing as a result, his set work inventive and at times even playful. His engagement with his subjects was unparalleled, among whom are included Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Moffo, Anita Ekberg, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, John F. Kennedy, Halston, Marlene Dietrich, Leslie Caron, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Richard Burton, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and many more. Many of these images have not been widely seen since they were first published decades ago. In addition to the photographs, Gigli contributes his personal account of the making of many of the pictures, evoking long-ago encounters that resulted in such timeless images. This handsome volume highlights a significant body of work, captures a vital aspect of the great age of photojournalism, and places in context an iconic image of the postwar era at the height of its prosperity and on the verge of transformation.
As a novel-writer and a dramatist, Gogol appears to me to deserve a minute study, and if the knowledge of Russian were more widely spread, he could not fail to obtain in Europe a reputation equal to that of the best English humorists. A delicate and close observer, quick to detect the absurd, bold in exposing, but inclined to push his fun too far, Gogol is in the first place a very lively satirist. He is merciless towards fools and rascals, but he has only one weapon at his disposalÑirony. This is a weapon which is too severe to use against the merely absurd, and on the other hand it is not sharp enough for the punishment of crime; and it is against crime that Gogol too often uses it. His comic vein is always too near the farcical, and his mirth is hardly contagious. If sometimes he makes his reader laugh, he still leaves in his mind a feeling of bitterness and indignation; his satires do not avenge society, they only make it angry. As a painter of manners, Gogol excels in familiar scenes. He is akin to Teniers and Callot. We feel as though we had seen and lived with his characters, for he shows us their eccentricities, their nervous habits, their slightest gestures. One lisps, another mispronounces his words, and a third hisses because he has lost a front tooth. Unfortunately Gogol is so absorbed in this minute study of details that he too often forgets to subordinate them to the main action of the story. To tell the truth, there is no ordered plan in his works, andÑa strange trait in an author who sets up as a realistÑhe takes no care to preserve an atmosphere of probability. His most carefully painted scenes are clumsily connectedÑthey begin and end abruptly; often the author's great carelessness in construction destroys, as though wantonly, the illusion produced by the truth of his descriptions and the naturalness of his conversations.
A handkerchief left on a table. A young boy at an Indian circus. A Spaniard spinning on the dance floor. A pianist returning home to her first and true love. Four Doors and Other Stories sparkles with unique characters and startling images, each one walking the line between dream and reality. The twelve stories in this collection travel from the magical doors in a French teacher’s hallway to a hidden copse in a gypsy camp, to a small town where a postman who delivers love letters is always losing his cap. Four Doors and Other Stories explores the nature and the breadth of love, not only in its most recognizable forms—sacrifice, forgiveness, and longing—but in its strangest: in distance, infidelity, jealousy, and isolation. Through surprising characters and varied storytelling, A.G. Billig blurs the line between dreams and the magic of reality to paint a portrait of love in all its forms.
In this collection of sixteen stories, Gordimer brings unforgettable characters from every corner of society to life: a child refugee fleeing civil war in Mozambique; a black activist's deserted wife longing for better times; a rich safari party indulging themselves while lionesses circle their lodge. Jump is a vivid, disturbing and rewarding portrait of life in South Africa under apartheid.
An anthology of ten short stories by one of Korea's foremost living writers. Pak Wanso is the author of five novels, including The Naked Tree, and of several best-selling volumes of short prose. Her works have sold millions of copies in Korea, where the public and critics alike have applauded Pak as a masterful realist. The literary world of Pak depicts the trials of the Korean War and the subsequent three decades of upheaval during which Korea was transformed from a military dictatorship and an agriculturally based society to an urban industrialized, albeit troubled, democracy. Pak offers a searching woman's perspective on radical changes in Korean family structures and social values, exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy of Korea's Confucian traditions, which have subjugated women for centuries. Her realistic prose also portrays the dehumanizing impacts of the capitalist market order that characterizes Korea today. With rich insight, Pak presents moral ambiguities inherent in Korea's society today and encourages her readers to question the injustices that prevail in the more impersonal and often alienated world emerging in a "globalized" Korea.
